Port Adelaide's reserves storm blows up
PORT coach Ken Hinkley won't get a senior reserves team, as every other AFL coach will have next year - and you can blame David Koch.
PORT coach Ken Hinkley won't get a senior reserves team, as every other AFL coach will have next year - and you can blame David Koch, says Michelangelo Rucci.
KEITH Thomas has 24 hours to save face with Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley.
When the Power hired Hinkley - after letting down Matthew Primus - Thomas, as club chief executive, set about ensuring the latest novice coach at Alberton was surrounded by staff and resources to compete in the AFL. Despite the financial constraints at Port, Hinkley was given top-shelf support with a coaching director (Alan Richardson) and fitness coach (Darren Burgess).
On Friday, Hinkley heard how emotion gets in the way of ambition at Alberton. Club president David Koch declared he would rather fight to keep the SANFL-based Magpies under-16 team than give Hinkley a senior reserves team, as every other AFL coach will have next year.
It was an appalling abandonment of all the Port Adelaide Football Club stood for in 1990 when it was prepared to be wiped out of the SANFL completely to join an expanding VFL. It was a bewildering back-hander to Hinkley who stood with Koch on the MCG in March as they signed a sponsorship deal with French carmaker Renault to signal the suburban club from Alberton was inviting the world to watch it on a national stage.
Thomas, who grew up as a Magpie fan but played for Norwood, this morning needs to get away from his Alberton-based office where he can no longer see the trees from the forest in the AFL-SANFL debate. He must find clear space in which to salvage a mess.
Thomas' model of having the Power reserves aligned to the Magpies league side - and keeping all the Magpie add ons in the SANFL - is gone. It died with Koch's emotional speech at the SANFL chairman's lunch at West Lakes on Friday. He offended the SANFL league directors in the room. He will never get their votes again. Never.
There is an out for Thomas, who in the past fortnight has not taken the hint from the SA Football Commission to come up with a new proposal on the Power reserves team. And there is one that gives Hinkley his reserves team, preserves the Magpies and delivers unquestionable integrity to the SANFL.
Thomas has offered to hand back to the SANFL clubs the Magpies' $625,000 annual dividend (money the SANFL clubs know they will not see as the commission will use it for debt reduction rather than bigger cheques to clubs). He should keep that money in his One Club coffers to bankroll the Power reserves in the VFL, a competition that will ultimately become an AFL reserves series. Hinkley will be satisfied.
Thomas can then commit to improving the integrity of the SANFL by offering an AFL-free Magpies. They will play in the SANFL with league, reserves and under-age teams in the purest form possible. They will not compromise the SANFL The league directors cannot oppose this. They don't even get a vote on this.
The bridge between the Power and SANFL will be for "top-up" players, either from the Magpies or from the SANFL clubs aligned to Port under the AFL father-son rule. The same theme can apply to the Crows reserves team whether it be in the SANFL as Adelaide prefers or the VFL.
Everyone is pleased. Hinkley gets to prepare his AFL players like all his coaching rivals do. The Magpies are not only saved but made pure. And integrity is restored to the SANFL.
Thomas has 24 hours to get the paperwork to SANFL football chief Chris Davies before the final recommendations are made to the commission tomorrow.
NEW PORT IN A STORM
PORT Adelaide has just one chance to salvage its plan to have both an AFL reserves team for the Power and full-scale SANFL unit for the Magpies. Its proposal to the SA Football Commission and SANFL league directors must seek:
- POWER reserves play in VFL. This can be funded by the $625,000 annual dividend to the Magpies that the PAFC has offered to return to the SANFL.
- POWER claim "top-up" players from academy list established with Magpies and/or other SANFL "partner clubs" (such as those aligned to the Power under the AFL father-son rule).
- MAGPIES match every other traditional SANFL club with full integrity - no AFL players ever assigned to the Magpies.
- MAGPIES keep teams in all grades - league, reserves and under-age - and all recruiting zones. For integrity reasons, the Magpies must work to same rules to its traditional SANFL rivals.
- MAGPIES play and recruit to needs of its coaching panel, not that of the Power senior coach.
- MAGPIES regain seat at SANFL league directors table for integrity reasons.
RIP IT UP
FIVE THINGS WE LEARNED THIS WEEK
1. NEW VOICE, SAME MESSAGE
DAVID Koch worked his television breakfast show Sunrise into the homes - and hearts - of millions of Australians by doing just that, offering a little bit of sunshine every morning. With the exception of breast-feeding mums, Koch never offends the people with the remote control connection to television ratings. But with a reminder that the spirit of Bruce Weber lives on at Alberton, Koch contradicted his television persona on Friday when, as the Port Adelaide Football Club president, he annoyed his host, SANFL president John Olsen, and the SANFL league directors at Olsen's lunch at AAMI Stadium. There is a saying worth remembering at Alberton: Never bite the hand you want to vote for you!
2. A BIT OF NEEDLE
IT is easier to inject AFL footballers than laboratory rats, as The Australian columnist Patrick Smith noted at the weekend. He wrote: "The lack of governance issue has haunted Essendon since chairman David Evans announced in February the club had called in ASADA to investigate the 2012 supplements program. The more that is learned, the more it is obvious that a large slab of the club management must go. The board members need to reassess their future, (coach James) Hird and his coaching panel must be replaced and the medical team renewed.
"Instead, to quote the great Malcolm Blight, those at fault at Essendon don't give a rat's tossbag."
3. AND MORE NEEDLE
AS the storm spills out of the tea cup at Essendon, inaugural Crows coach Graham Cornes will take issue with Melbourne academic Waleed Aly who writes: "We saw (reality ignored) when sports commentators lined up to dismiss the federal government's announcements of widespread use of drugs in sport as a cynical beat-up on the basis that they weren't immediately told who was guilty. This, of course, revealed a complete failure to grasp the concept of a serious criminal investigation that does not subordinate itself to the almighty needs of sports reporting."
4. DIRTY NEEDLE
AFL boss Andrew Demetriou returned to work on Friday and still can't work out if AOD-9604 - the anti-obesity drug that is not an anti-obesity drug - was on the Australian Sports Anti-Doping Authority banned list last year despite it being outlawed by the World Anti-Doping Authority since 2011. Now what was that line the AFL would shop that its drug policy was tougher than WADA had imposed on other sports?
5. STATUS QUO
ADRIAN Anderson is gone from AFL House, but the AFL is still to report a player for staging; it is still to appeal against match review panel findings and tribunal hearings make replays of Port Adelaide's games from last season seem interesting.
RIPPER OF THE WEEK
"LET me tell you Ken Hinkley is not thrilled about the prospect of being the only AFL side not to have a reserves side, but he understands..."
Port Adelaide president DAVID KOCH putting the handcuffs on his club's senior coach.